Fitz's Journal

Redemption: Words Stolen from Time (& Writing Prompt)

Finally, the tall green pines standing sentinel around this cold New Hampshire pond are framed in a sky of blue. After a month of steady rains, foggy nights, and misty days I am reborn into a newly created world--a world that finally answered my prayers: no more trying to find that elusive spot under the camper awning that doesn’t seem to leak; no more running across the wet field dragging Tommy bouncing and laughing like a half-inflated beach toy towards a smokey campfire, and (almost regrettably) no more endless scrabble, card games, monopoly and shallow books. This fresh blue morning barks out the possibilities of the day: “Here is my rope-swing; here are my trails; there lie my waters...”

The window is small and the day is large. I shouldn’t even be here teasing words from empty an page when I should be embracing the possibilities of today. As Thoreau said: “My life is the poem I should have writ/ But, I could not both live and utter it.” The ignorant and lazy part of us might want to rally around Thoreau’s sentiment and say, “Amen to that,” but we would miss the irony and wistfulness of our collective predicament: like kids balancing on a plank set on a log, we scramble back and forth to find that sweet spot on the plank, that place of perfect balance between the forces of yin and yang--but, if we find that spot, we allow ourselves only a few moments of self-indulgent awe before searching for a more elusive and demanding challenge. To live fully, we must be bored quickly by the easy and mundane.  We have to set a larger plank across a bigger log. There is no legal limit to how many balls a juggler can have in the air.  We are only captive to gravity and the sun ticking its way to the horizon. 

I needed this blue sky to let me see the horizon and the infinite juxtapositions between the earth and sky. I need to be reminded that my page will always be empty if I don’t embrace the day that comes before it. I need to rush headlong into the blinding light; I need to fall and get up time and time again in contagious and courageous rhythm, and I need to remember to spend my day, and not simply save it, as if I could redeem it tomorrow.

My life and my words are my final redemption, woven (and rushed imperfectly) into the rags I wear.

Writing Prompt:
After nine or ten months of school, we are sometimes overwhelmed by the sudden influx of “free” time into our daily lives. Each day is suddenly alive with possibilities of choices, and we are free (and sometimes burdened) to do whatever we want. There is seldom a clear cut way to best spend your day--but you can try.  The word “essay“ means “to try.” So try to spend your day as fully as you can, and, before you go to bed, try (by writing a short essay) to capture your day in thoughts, images, and actions. Try to find a “theme” that best states the spirit of your adventures (everything you do is an adventure of some sort) and place that theme as the last line of your first paragraph.

We (especially us English teachers!) often overcomplicate what an essay is supposed to be. Any essay is simply a story, an idea, a thought, a response, or a reflection built around a single theme--and a theme is simply the main point you are trying to explore when you write. My best essays are almost always drawn out of a rambling journal entry of some sort, which is a great reason to keep a daily journal!.  Read my formula for writing a quick essay, and try to write an essay about a day where you do your best to live out the possibilities of the day.  If you use my my formula, your essay will be at least three paragraphs long, though as you can see by my own essay, the last paragraph can be a single line.  Post it in your blog and read and comment on the other blogs.

Have fun!

~Fitz

Fitz's Quick Essay & Reflection Formula

"Set the scene and state the theme. Say what you mean, and finish it clean!"

One of the hardest parts of writing is finding a way to make sense of what you want to say, explain, or convey to your readers--especially when facing an empty page with a half an hour to kill and an entry to write (or a timed essay or exam writing prompt). Here is a quick formula that might help you when you need to create a writing piece "on the fly." At the very least, it should guide you as your write in your blog, and at the very least, it will reinforce that any essay needs to be at least three paragraphs long! I've always told my students (who are probably tired of hearing me recite the same things over and over again): "If you know the rules, you can break them." But you'd better be a pretty solid writer before you start creating your own rules. The bottom line is that nobody really cares about what you write; they care about how your writing affects and transforms them intellectually and emotionally as individuals.
If a reader does not sense early on that your writing piece is worth reading, they won't read it, unless they have to (like your teachers), or they are willing to (because they are your friend). Do them all a favor and follow these guidelines and everyone will be happy and rewarded. Really!.

1. Set the scene and state the theme: Use your first paragraph to lead up to your theme. If the lead in to your essay is dull and uninspired, you will lose your readers before they get to the theme. If you simply state your theme right off the bat, you will only attract the readers who are "already" interested in your topic. Your theme is the main point, idea, thought, or experience you want your writing piece to convey to your audience. (Often it is called a "Thesis Statement.) I suggest making your theme be the last sentence of your opening paragraph because it makes sense to put it there, and so it will guide your reader in a clear and, hopefully, compelling way. In fact, constantly remind yourself to make your theme be clear, concise and memorable. Consciously or unconsciously, your readers constantly refer back to your theme as mnemonic guide for "why" you are writing your essay in the first place! Every writing piece is a journey of discovery, but do everything you possibly can to make the journey worthwhile from the start.

A sentence is a thought fully expressed. A paragraph is a thought fully explored.

2. Say what you mean: Write about your theme. Use as many paragraphs as you "need." A paragraph should be as short as it can be and as long as it has to be. Make the first sentence(s) "be" what the whole paragraph is going to be about. Try and make those sentences be clear, concise and memorable (just like your theme) and make sure everything relates closely to the theme you so clearly expressed in your first paragraph. If your paragraph does not relate to your theme, it would be like opening up the directions for a fire extinguisher and finding directions for baking chocolate chip cookies instead! And finally, do your best to balance the size of your body paragraphs. If they are out of proportion to each other, then an astute reader will make the assumption that some of your points are way better than your other points, and so the seed of cynicism will be sown before your reader even begins the journey.

3. Finish it clean: Conclusions need to be as simple as possible. In conversations only boring or self important people drag out the end of a conversation. When you are finished saying what you wanted to say, exit confidently and cleanly. DON"T add any new information into the last paragraph; DON'T retell what you've already told, and DON'T preen before the mirror of your brilliance. Just "get out of Dodge" in an interesting and thoughtful (and quick) way. Use three sentences or less. It shows your audience that you appreciate their intelligence and literacy!

Set the scene; state the theme; say what you mean, and finish it clean is a simple rubric for writing to keep in your head as you read and comment, and to practice in your writing as you reflect and express yourself with words.

A Mother’s Memory

    I walk into my mother’s room at the assisted living center in Concord—and walk straight to the refrigerator.  It’s the same motion I’ve made every day since I could move in an upright position—some primal pavlovian response to the coolness of coiled condensers. The refrigerator from my childhood—bursting with an unending gaggle of epicurean delight to feed six ravenous kids and a steady stream of friends—is now an obscenely small countertop square in the corner of an uncluttered kitchenette.  But, still, I still expect to see gobs of grapes, oranges, and apples; chocolate pudding, leftover tuna casseroles, and Shepard’s pie, appian way pizza, kool-aid, custard, baloney; and eggs: pickled, deviled, scrambled, and boiled; and potatoes fried, mashed, hashed and rehashed in the unending evolution of necessity and tradition.

    But sometimes potato buds: dry flakes mixed with water and two tablespoons of butter and mixed, when times were harder—times that were never actually mentioned—with a cup of carnation instant milk whose greatest benefit to childhood was to hide the peas, beets, boiled onions and other scourges of an Irish Catholic childhood that we were force fed in the daily penance of nutrition.  The whole milk with cream tops in glass bottles with paper caps; my father pawing the top shut and shaking the heavy cream back into the milk itself, exhorting us to imitate his practiced perfection, which none of us could do, and we always spilled the milk on the cracked formica table and vinyl chairs, and he always screamed, “Every night, somebody has to spill the milk: every single night!”

    And then, after the mopping rags, dinner resumed in the chaotic recollections of the day: fights about whose night it was to do the dishes, and who didn’t mow around the trees; who got seconds last night, and who got a C in penmanship, and who shouldn’t get two hydrox cookies for dessert because they weren’t smart enough to hide their peas in the potato buds. And we sat in the same seats with annoying little sister Annie on my right and an annoying little brother Tom on my left and my big sisters staring across from me: Eileen with her studious perfection; Mary Ellen with her jocky, untempered cockiness, and Patty, so old and hip that I hardly knew her, until she died so young that I can’t forget her; and in the overstuffed kitchen dad’s back was almost crunched against the basement door, and mom was pressed against the dining room wall—the room with the walnut table and eight matching chairs that we never used—a museum stuffed with bone china and silverware we polished every Christmas, bought, I’m sure, with green stamps and coupons.

    And out of that space we were reborn each day.

    Every morning, mom poured the wheaties, boiled the oatmeal and cut the grapefruit, while we listened to Joe Green in the BZ copter mumbling unintelligible warnings about tie-ups at the Alewife circle, and we sang along to  the hits of the week:“Watch me wallabies feed, mates, watch me wallabies feed.” Dad would grab his briefcase and we’d all try to be the first one to scream “Bye dad!” in a cacophony of competition, and, as if on cue, mom would sneak behind me and hold my head while I jerked convulsively, and she’d rub a warm wet cloth across my face and straighten my clip on tie and try to force down my cowlick and pick at my ears until I was fit to be presented to Sister Jean Beatrice—and, by some sort of convoluted math, to God.  And then she’d sit in her chair, quietly, and write her own mother a letter.

    Every single day she’d write grandma a letter … One of us could get the letter paper; and one of us could get the envelope; one of us would get to lick the stamp; one of us could put it on the letter; one of us could carry it to the mailbox, and the last one could lift up the metal flag. I never knew it was a ritual of perfection—a continual journey into the heart of the mystic love of family. You never know, but still, you remember.

    I never know exactly who I’ll see when I visit my mom. Over the past two years, Alzheimer’s is slowly chipping away at the edges of her memory.  One day she’ll remind me that it’s my childhood friend Danny Gannon’s birthday, and on the next day she’ll ask me who all the pretty children are…and like polite grandkids they dutifully tell her their names once again, except for Tommy, who screams.  “You know me; I’m Tommy!” who jumps on her lap and asks for a kiss—“Not that kind of kiss—a chocolate kiss.” And she smiles and says, “Of course, I know you.”

    I went to see her last night and looked at ads for cars in the Boston Globe.  She wants a Toyota. “Your father loved his Toyota.” I smile to her, “That’s because Toyotas were cheap, and dad loved cheap.” It doesn’t matter that she will never drive again. It doesn’t matter that we will have the same conversation tomorrow. It doesn’t matter that soon she will slip into a cloud of unknowing. It only matters that she is here, and in the magic and mysterious majesty of memory, she will always be here.

******************************************

Writing a Memoir using Poetry or Prose

We all have people in our lives that are really important to us.  A "Memoir" is a story we tell about that person.  This week, try and write a memoir about a person in your life who is important to you. This person can be a friend, a grandparent or parent, brother or sister, or aunt or uncle—anybody whom you know well and who helps you feel special and loved, or who has helped you through a hard time in life, or who is inspired and inspiring.

The Prose Memoir

There are many ways to write memoirs. Here is a simple and straightforward way to write a prose memoir.

1st Paragraph: Set the scene. Start with a scene where you and your memoir person are doing something together. Describe everything about that scene.  End the first paragraph by telling the one thing you like most about that person.  That becomes the "theme" of your memoir.

2nd Paragraph: Say what you mean. Write about why this person is important to you. Tell us your thoughts and feelings, and describe the specific “actions” this person does for and with you that makes him or her so special. Try and write at least five sentences—more if you can write more!!!

3rd Paragraph: Finish it clean. Start your last paragraph by telling us why everyone should have a person like your memoir person in his or her life. End the paragraph with one short sentence that"captures" why your person is so great—and use an exclamation point at the end. For example: "Uncle Tony is the coolest guy in the whole world!"

The Memoir Anaphora Poem:

Anaphora is a poetic technique that uses repeating phrases to start each line of the poem.  In essay and narrative writing (prose), it is called “parallel structure.” In both cases, if done well, it adds a powerful rhythm and cadence to your writing.  I used it throughout my “Mom” memoir. Here is an example from my writing:

One of us could get the letter paper; and one of us could get the envelope; one of us would get to lick the stamp; one of us could put it on the letter; one of us could carry it to the mailbox, and the last one could lift up the metal flag.

A good way to start an anaphora memoir poem is with the phrase “I remember…” and then create a list of memories using images and actions. Each line should be one natural breath long—usually around 10 syllables, if you count each syllable carefully. This helps each line be long enough to have substance and meaning, but short enough that your readers don’t pass out trying to read your poetry:) It is also ok to put in some short lines, too, for variation, but that is up to you.  The point is to say what you want or need to say.

Each new stanza should start with a new phrase.

For example:

Stanza one: I remember…
Stanza two: He (or she) always…
Stanza three: I wish…

I think you get the idea. You can create any type of anaphora beginnings that you want because you are the poet—and good poets are always willing to take chances

Post your poem or story in your blog. Make sure to read other people's memoirs and leave a comment for them.

Thanks for trying this!

Fitz

Conquer the Comma

Becoming better at something is not rocket science; it is, as Thomas Edison said, "...90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. In other words, reaching a new level in any skill or endeavor requires old-fashioned work. In writing, this means that you need to learn some of the basic skills of punctuation so that the depth and power of your words are delivered to your readers as effectively as possible. Luckily, most people are able to read through errors in punctation without becoming completely confused. One of the best writers in the English language, Cormac McCarthy, uses punctuation sparingly. However, I am also sure, he knows darn well how to use punctuation if he needed to use punctuation, and I am also sure that your teachers, SAT graders, and potential employers will appreciate that you utilize proper and effective punctuation in your writing.

After many years of writing and teaching writing, I can say with confidence that the ability to use a comma correctly is 90% of the punctuation battle; furthermore, 90% of knowing how and when to use commas is being able to know a clause or a phrase when you you see it (or write it!).

Take the time to study my comma rules and common comma errors, and view the attached  powerpoint on clauses and comma usage: It is also on my blog:  Simply go to my Punctuation links. There is a link that will take you to a page with numerous punctuation powerpoints. View: “Clauses: Essential Building Blocks” and the “English House of Commas.” This should prepare you for learning more about comma usage (and misusage). 

Here is the "Conquering the Comma" powerpoint, which will work for you if you have Powerpoint or Keynote (for mac) on your computer. Download Conqering the Comma Powerpoint

Whenever you use (or don't use) a comma, you should soon know which rule you are using.  And when you know the rules, you will write with more confidence and clarity, and, like Cormac McCarthy, if you know the  rules, you can break them!

Have fun.  After you feel like you know what you are doing, try some of the online quizzes at the bottom of this page to find out if you have conquered the comma--or not!

I will send this weeks writing prompt, "Writing a Memoir," to you later today (to give you time to practice commas:)

Thanks for all of the great writing posted on your blogs. Stay inspired, keep writing, and keep commenting.

Fitz

The Top Ten Comma Rules:

Separate Elements in a Series:

• I have to remember to bring my books,pencil, baloney, and peanut butter fluff sandwich.

Use a comma before the final "if" there could be any confusion in meaning without it.

Note: if you are introducing a list with a noun, use a colon to introduce the list.

• Don't forget these important items: my books, pencil, baloney, and peanut butter
• fluff sandwich. 

If you introduce the list with a verb use a comma after the first item in the list:

• Don't forget my books, pencil, baloney, and peanut butter fluff sandwich.

Commas with Conjunctions:
Soyet Andor Norforbut (I have my kids say these words with a Russian accent to help them remember the conjunctions.  Look closely and you will see they are the seven main conjunctions.  Whenever you use one of these words a little bell should go off in your head: “Maybe I need a comma here.”) These commas must have an independent clause (meaning, it can stand alone as a sentence) BEFORE and AFTER the conjunction and comma.

This kind of comma can always be replaced with a period or semi-colon instead of the comma and conjunction.

• It is raining, so I am not going to school. [comma and conjunction]
• It is raining; I am not going to read. [semi-colon]
• It is raining. I am not going to study comma usage. [period]

Commas with Introductory Elements (words, phrases, and dependent clauses):

• Actually, Fred can take the test. (introductory word).
• Without thinking, he ran into the burning building and saved his goldfish.
• (introductory phrase)
• Because it is raining, I am not going to school.
• (dependent clause).

Commas with parenthetical elements (non-essential phrases and words):
The kid in the back row, who loves grammar, took all of the quizzes and
studied the comma use webpage.

• Note:
  If it you want your reader to read the parenthetical element without emphasis, use commas.
  If you want to whisper or say something as an aside, use parentheses.
  If you want to shout, use double dashes.

Commas with descriptive adjectives:
If you can naturally (meaning, without it sounding weird) put an "and" or a "but" between the adjectives, a comma will probably belong there.

• He is a mean, nasty, hard-hearted
  teacher, but, at the same time, he is a wise old owl.

Commas that express contrast:
This is important when comparing the
differences in somebody or something and you want to emphasize the
contrast. He's big, but slow.
You don't need a comma if you write "He is big and slow." because you are not emphasizing the contrast.

Commas to avoid confusion in meaning:

• For most, the year is already finished.

These commas often fall into another rule as well. In this case, "for
most" is an introductory phrase. Here, the comma helps to clarify that the writer is talking about "most" of the people, not most of the year.

Commas to set off quotes:

• Fitz said, "Know how to use commas, and you are 90% of towards writing grammatically correct sentences."

It is important to remember that you can also use a colon to set off a quote.
Use a colon when the quote is introduced by a noun.

• My teacher says Fitz has too many rules, and this is what he told his students: “To thine own self be true. Don’t listen to fools.”

If a quote is four or more lines long, separate the quote as a paragraph introduced with a colon, whether the preceding word is a verb or not. (I like the quotes in italics, but that is not a rule.”)  You don’t need the quotation marks because the indentation and context indicates the quote. Indent the entire quote one inch from the left margin.

Commas with place names and dates:
Use this format:

• On June 8, 2009, The Fenn School,
  Concord MA, will be a quiet place.

Commas with tag elements:
A tag element is a word or phrase "tagged on to
the end of a sentence.

• Do you love studying commas, Peter?
• I couldn't memorize all of this myself, of course.

In most cases, the tag element can be removed from the sentence without any loss in meaning (though there will be a loss in clarity!).

Here Are Some of the Common Comma Errors

1. Commas with Parenthetical Elements:
If you need it, then you don’t need it!
Any phrase or clause that could go in parentheses, could also be enclosed within commas or a double dash.
Here you need to figure out if the information you are adding to a sentence is essential or non-essential.  If the sentence "makes sense" without the phrase or clause then it is non-essential, and so it needs a comma to separate it from the essential part of the sentence. However, if the phrase or clause is essential to the meaning of the sentence, you should not use commas

For example:

• My brother in the red shirt likes ice cream. [In this sentence, you might have two brothers, so the red shirt is essential to the sentence.]
• My brother, in the red shirt, likes ice cream. [In this sentence, you are talking about one brother, who just happens to be wearing a red shirt. The red shirt adds detail, but it is not essential to understanding the sentence.]

2. Comma Splice:
This is one of the easiest mistakes to make as a writers because it is so easy and natural to do! If you become a fanatic about your use of commas with conjunctions between independent clauses, then you will go a long way towards avoiding this common mistake.

A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses are joined only with a comma.

For example:

• I love English class, our teacher is so easy.

Note:
A comma splice also occurs when a comma is used to divide a subject from its verb. For example:
My students are engaged in my class, and never want to leave. [The subject “my students” is separated from one of its verbs "want." Also, “never want to leave” is not an independent clause, which should trigger an alarm in your head!]

3. Missing Comma in Compound Sentence:
Soyet Andor Norforbut (spoken with a heavy slavic accent)

For example:

• Stella lived for many years in Boston and she lived for many years in Concord. (Comma should be placed before the "and.") 

Remember "Soyet Andornorforbut!"  Anytime you see one of these conjunctions, stop and ask yourself if there is an "independent clause" after it; if so, use a comma.

4.  Missing Comma after Introductory Elements:
An introductory element is a word, phrase, or clause that introduces and/or sets up the main part of the sentence
To understand this, you need to know the difference between a phrase and a clause:
*A phrase is a group of closely related words that is missing a subject or a verb. It is usually a prepositional phrase.

For example:

• After eating, we went home. [There is no subject in the introductory phrase.]
• After dinner, we went home. [There is no verb in the introductory phrase.]

*A clause is a closely related group of words that contains a subject AND a verb.

For example:

• I am cool. [I is the subject, and am is the verb]
• Phil ran towards the water. [Phil is the verb; ran is the verb, and "towards the water" is a prepositional phrase.]

Here’s the rub: Now you need to be able to tell if a clause is dependent or independent.

The Difference between an Independent and Dependent Clause
*An independent clause when it can survive on its own as a sentence as an idea fully expressed or a completed thought.

For example:

• . [This is a fully expressed thought!]

*A dependent clause if it needs another clause to "complete the thought" and complete the sentence.

For example:

• While Phil ran towards the water, [This is “dependent” on more information—as in an independent clause—to be a fully expressed thought, such as: While Phil ran towards the water, I called the police.]

Here are the two big rules on clauses and comma usage:
1. If a dependent clause comes at the beginning of a sentence, it needs to have a comma after the dependent clause, but if the dependent clause comes after an independent clause, it does not need a comma because the word that comes before the dependent clause (called a "dependent clause marker") acts as the comma.

Generally, it is better to put the independent clause first because it has the most important information in the sentence.

For example:

• We didn’t have school today because it was snowing. [Not having school is the main point of the sentence, and so it should come to your reader’s attention first.]
• Because we had the storm of the century today that walloped New England with ten feet of snow, we didn’t have school today. [Here the important part is the big storm, so it is fine to have the dependent clause come first.]

Note:
If you have two independent clauses--and you want to have one sentence--you must combine these sentences using a comma with a conjunction, a semi-colon, or a long dash (double dash).

*************************************************************************

***So, there you have it--most of what I know about commas, clauses, phrases, and conjunctions:) I hope it helps. 

 

Danny, Jimmy, and Me: A Writing Prompt

   

Mrs Roeber never seemed to let Jimmy go outside, which, to my thinking as an 11 year old, was why he was so smart.  Most days after school, I’d rush two houses down the street and get Danny Gannon to come out and play. Then the two of us would go to Jimmy’s house next door.  If Mrs Roeber answered, she would always be polite and say something like, “Jimmy needs to catch up on some science work. Perhaps he can play later.”  If Jimmy answered, he’d usually be out of breath from running upstairs from his basement “office” and plead with us not to give up on him--or at the very least go out back and talk to him through the basement window.  So, me and Danny would sneak out back and lay on our stomachs on the pokey grey gravel outside his basement window. Five feet below, Jimmy would be doing his work at his workbench (which, in all honesty, was a pretty cool place).  I always wished I was smarter, so I could  do his work for him and get him outside to play. I was better than Jimmy at a lot of things, but those things were never get graded until you can appreciate them “later in life.“  But, to my Tom Sawyer way of thinking, I preferred being outside and average to being inside and smart.  Danny was an outside kid and smart, too, and that always troubled me, but not enough to let it call my inside/smart: outside/not smart philosophy into question. Danny’s voice was always the one that tried to tell me that the sledding jump was too high, or that branch would not support my weight, or those snakes would bite, or that we couldn’t run faster than a nest of bees we just destroyed.  Once we got Jimmy outside, he was like a mad scientist: ”We’ll, just have to see how high Fitz can go on his sled,“ or, ”I’ll distract the snake so Fitz  can grab it from behind,“ or ”Bees have been clocked flying at 80 miles per hour.“ Looking back, we probably seemed like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, and we did tend to go our different ways as we grew older, but we always still manage to reconnect somehow, and it doesn’t seem like we are a day older. It’s kind of hard to put into words because Danny and Jimmy might not be my best friends, but they will always be my best friends. Just thinking of the three of us together is like a window opening to a cool and welcome breeze. And the coolest thing is the window is always there. It might be that the only thing we actually had in common was living next door to each other, but still, we made it work. Imagine if the world thought this way.

Writing Prompt: It was fun for me to sit down for the hour or more it took me to write that paragraph and remember Danny and Jimmy.  Because it is only one paragraph (I could probably break it in two or three), it can only give a glimpse into our friendship, but (hopefully) it gives you enough to know how important they were--and still are--in my life. For the first writing prompt this week, tell a story about someone you consider to be one of your best friends. It can be as long as you want it to be, but it should be at least one ”meaty“ paragraph. The reason it took me so long to write my paragraph (apart from the fact that I spent too much of my childhood outside:)) is that I ”tried“ to use specific scenes to help tell my story; I used dialogue a little bit, and I used some ”reflection“ (which is a fancy word for saying what I thought and felt).  If you put all three of those writing techniques together, it always makes for more interesting reading.  Try it!!!

Comment: PLEASE, please, pleez, pull-ease comment on the other blogs in your community.  Just click on their names in the sidebar, read what your fellow writers are writing and leave a nice comment because it is really nice to know when people appreciate the work you do.  Heck, you can even go to my blog and post a comment. It will make my day!

Write what you want: The prompts are just a part of what you should be writing on your blogs. Half the fun of writing is just sitting down and seeing what comes.  Write movie and book reviews, describe a day in your life in the summer, write poetry or songs, post pictures--anything! because everything you put in your blog will help to make your blog a treasure trove of memories you can have for the rest of your life.

A Pause for a Paragraph

Hmm... I 'm watching the rain, looking at my unfinished boat, the overgrown yard, the pots and pans in the sink, a lonely guitar, a tattered copy of Walden--and this: a few words in my blog. Today I'll choose my blog, if only for a few moments. For me, summer is a sea of options where everything becomes a choice--which can be difficult after a busy school year where it seemed I never really had "choice." The piles of paperwork, reading, sports, kids, and routines that kept me busy from early morning to late night are now the vignettes of another passing year.  When you reach my age, there is a heightened poignancy to the passage of time and a recognition of our collective indebtedness to the gift of time. In my tattered copy of Walden there is a line that has always stuck with me: "You can't kill time without wounding eternity." There is a lot I can do today, and there will be a lot left undone; but, the chores and cares of my summer days are like collecting agates on the seashore: that one looks good,so does that one...and eternity is saved for another day.

Welcome to the Summer Blogs: First Writing Prompt

Welcome to The Summer Blogs!

I will be sending you updates and writing prompts on a regular basis throughout the summer. Try and get to them as soon as you can, but I fully understand that we all have busy summer lives and sometimes you are not near a computer to post your writing.The prompts are only part of what we do.  Use your blog to write as often as you can in any way you want. If you are having any problems logging on, or if you have any questions, please e-mail me.

Thanks!

Figuring Out How to Begin

I drove down to down to the cape last night with EJ and Pipo.  It seemed a bit unfair, as the rest of the kids in our family (five more of them) still have school this week.  I thought I woke up early, but the boys woke up earlier and are already off with Nana and Papa exploring something somewhere. At the end of the day, I will ask both of them to “blog and comment.”  They won’t exactly jump for joy when I ask, but usually they are proud and happy when they finish their entry and read what their friends have written in their community. EJ and Pipo might not feel like they are becoming better writers because they wrote about crab catching, beach combing, or badminton, but they are becoming better writers just by making the effort to write down their best images and actions and thoughts about their day. 

To be a writer, you must first be an explorer; and explorers are remembered because of the stories they tell. An explorer sets out each day hoping to find the unexpected and hoping to go where no man has gone before, but, at the same time, a true explorer must be willing to travel for days through empty space, endless deserts, and vast oceans, and everyday this explorer writes in his or her log or journal. This journal becomes a record of their exploration, and when cool things happen, they are all the cooler because they are unexpected and exciting, and sometimes just interesting. Franklin did not find the Northwest Passage, but he is still remembered; Shackleton never made it to the South Pole, but his story is still one of the most inspiring ever recorded; the Apollo 13 astronauts never landed on the moon, but their story is equally amazing. On the other hand, Henry David Thoreau did nothing more than build a small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord Massachusetts and wrote about what he thought and felt and did while he was there, and his book is considered one of the great classics in all of literature.  Everything in Walden was gleaned from the journal that Thoreau would write in religiously each day. Charles Darwin spent five years traveling the world in his sailing ship “Beagle” writing about the plants and creatures he found, and after he thought long and hard about what he found, he transformed our entire concept of science. My main point is that it really does not matter if you are describing the view from the top of the world’s highest mountain or describing the bluejay in the tree in your backyard. What matters is that you make the effort to write about it simply because it happened and is important enough to be remembered by you in your journal. If you write everyday (or at least as often as you can) you will always have a map of your journey and exploration--and it is this map that will enable you to create a compelling story--or even change the course of mankind.

The first step of every writer (and often the hardest step) is just getting words down on an empty page. Each week I will give you a writing prompt, but please don’t feel that is all you can or should do. Use your blog for writing ANYTHING you want to write, as long as it is appropriate. When first writing, it is often hard to “think of something to write about.” My first piece of advice is to start keeping a daily journal and write about what you know best--and that is you and your everyday life. Write about what you did today; write about what you saw; write about what you heard; write about what you felt today.  If nothing--absolutely nothing--happened today that you feel like writing about, then write about something you’ve done, or something you want to do, or something you would never do. If you like to write poetry, write poetry; if you want to try  writing a short story--go for it because I love stories, and I know a bunch of people in your community will love your stories, too. Read my “Ten Suggested Writing Genres” for examples of different writing styles you can try. Don’t feel that you have to write everything in your blog.  Take a notebook with when you don’t have a computer and use that notebook as a journal, too. I even have a tape recorder that I keep in my car to record thoughts while I am driving. Writing is about creating, and writing is about remembering. If you use your blog for those two things, you will always have something to write!

WRITING PROMPT #1: Learning to Set the Scene Using Specific Images & Actions & Place and a Question

 A good writer always tries to engage the imagination of his or her readers. As an aspiring writer  you need to remember that a reader can’t get inside your head, so it is necessary to “paint the picture” that you want your readers to see.  Since we only have words with which to paint, I want you to practice creating “images and actions” and placing those images somewhere to help you paint pictures with your writing.

For my writers in Fitzbloggers who have been with me for a few years, this is still an excellent exercise to practice in your narratives, essays, and stories! It is a skill I always try to be conscious of in my own writing--as imperfect as it still is!

Here we go:

Specific Image: A specific image is always a noun and any adjectives that describe that noun. A specific image is as focused as possible.

For example:

• “A person in a car“ is an image, but it is not an image that a reader will see they way you want them to see it; however, “The woman with the wild red hair in the white 1966 Corvette with chrome wheels” is a specific image that forces a reader to use their own imagination to see it more clearly--even if they are not sure “exactly” what a corvette looks like.

Action: An action is always a verb and any adverbs that describe the action:

For example:

• “The woman with the wild red hair in the white 1966 Corvette with chrome wheels squealed around the corner at 100 miles per hour.

Place: The place is where the images and actions are happening. The place should always be as specific as possible. A racetrack is a place, but it is not specific; however, “The aging two mile oval of brick at the Indianapolis Racetrack” is specific.

Put all three of these together and you can create a picture that a reader can see and experience more fully--in the way that you want them to see it!  Plus, it is also proof that you know what you are talking about, and, like supporting facts in an essay, it makes you more believable and trustworthy.

The woman with the wild red hair in the white 1966 Corvette with chrome wheels squealed around the corner at 100 miles per hour on the aging two mile oval of brick at the Indianapolis Racetrack.

Question:To make your image, action, and place more interesting, simply ask a question. For example: Why is this woman on the racetrack? What is she thinking? Who is she? Is she escaping from alien space invaders? Any one of these questions will serve as a topic for a paragraph--or even the start of a whole story.

Your Job: In your blog, create five Specific Images & Actions & Place and a Question. They don’t have to be fictional.  Even just sitting in your backyard you will see many images and actions that work:

For example:

• The ruffled sparrow chirping endlessly in the windblown pine tree: Is it laughing or crying?
• My little five year old brother, alone in our backyard, tosses up the plastic ball and swings his yellow whiffleball bat: Is he having fun?

Choose one of these scenes and answer the question in a detailed way. Don’t worry about telling a great story. Learning to write well is like the five year old swinging at the ball: just try and hit it--that is success!

Thanks and have fun! I’ll be checking your blogs on a daily basis. Use the chatbox to let people know when you have posted something new!  Be sure to check out the other blogs in your group and leave comments that are specific, supportive, and substantial!

Fitz

Last Words: Admonitions of an Old Fool

Going to Canobie Lake is always the turning point of the year for me. It is like some primal signal that it is time to turn away from the school year and towards the future.  Obviously, it is my hope that you learned some useful skills this year, but, more importantly, I hope that you have gained a deeper sense of the power and importance of words--and that you will tap into that power in whatever way you need or want over the course of your life. I want you to know that I am always around as another set of eyes for anything you write over these eight or ten more years of school--and many more of simply life--that you have ahead of you. Sometimes, it is simply good to hear from you. This year, this is the last you will hear from me. My last echo...

Life will change you, and you will change your life. Be willing to change. In just this past week, I heard from an old student who hated whenever I assigned a "creative" writing assignment. This year he won one of The Groton School's Creative Writing Awards. Another student who started playing guitar in the shop--and who refused to sing a single word--just released an impressive debut CD of original music. Don't be limited by what you feel you are today. Though you might only see a small stone; there is always a universe of possibilities! You just need to be brave enough  to cross the threshold; you have to accept that no songs will be sung about you if you avoid the pain and suffering and struggle of the heroic cycle, which is part and parcel of every life lived to the fullest. 

Your life is the epic poem you are about to live, so live! Don't be remembered as Huck's father, Pap, or the The Duke and Dauphin, or Himmelstoss or Kantorek, or a nameless suitor, or even a vain and impetuous god: be remembered as a man (because that is what you are) who responds to the stirrings within yourself and who recognizes these stirrings as the wisdom of Mentes, and who acts as if guided by the power of bright-eyed Athena. This is the power that entwined and empowered the actions of Jim and Huck and Paul, Telemachus and Odysseus. Trust your wisdom, for it is the power that sustains greatness.

Friendship is a metaphor for caring, persistence, constancy, and courage. Become that metaphor and you will never feel or be alone. Be like Paul Baumer and be willing to risk everything for your friends. Be like the kings and swineherds of The Odyssey and welcome strangers as the friends they should be  for friends will always be true and faithful even when society is not. Be willing to carry or be carried across and through the battles of life. Don't leave these friends you have made; don't lose touch with the cast of round and flat characters who make up your life today or you will become that flat character remembered only as a fleeting scene or footnote buried in the plot of a dull and uninspired story.

Your life is a young poem, and it is the soil upon which your future will grow.  Cultivate your mind as you would the garden you need to survive. Remember that poetry is the greatest fruit of your being. Poetry is not always a pile of written words; it is the ability to see like Basho. Life is never a single image.  It is an image and an action given new meaning by the twists and turns of how we take it and act upon it; it is the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated scenes that we pair together to create deeper meaning and purpose and sustenance.

Be prepared to sit and let the moon reflect off of you. Nature is the greatest teacher and the only one who is always there for you and who is always waiting. Though you can't enter the same river twice, you can always sit on the banks and be restored--but it will never happen unless you walk to the river--wherever and whatever that river happens to be. The classroom is only the finger pointing at the moon--not the moon itself.

Above all remember. Remember everything. Memories and thoughts only truly exist when put into words, so craft carefully and treasure dearly the words you create. Nothing gold can stay.  Give a damn.

Thanks for everything and good luck!

~fitz

The Final Exam

I wonder if they think I really care
so much about commas
that I don't see
their tired eyes
looking one last time
at the gray screen
saving their last testament
to childhood, printing out
slowly worked phrases and clauses
wrought from the vestiges
of exuberance,
anger,
and joy.

I don't really want
anything unreal.

I don't wonder;
I see wonder.

They pass in their exams
and shake my hand
with unspoken awkwardness--
like survivors
from a common storm--

and then leave
for a different world

Summer Is Upon Us

Every Memorial Day we have a picnic at our house, and every year more and more people from town show up for an afternoon of food, fun, and anticipation--anticipation for the summer that is soon upon us. Yesterday I gave my final exam to my 8th grade English students.  As soon as that pile of pages--some three hundred or more pages--are graded and returned, my thoughts turn to the "Fitz's Summer Writing Program" that I have been running for the past five summers. My summer blogs are a venture that I am proud to have started, and that I am inspired to continue again this summer and for many summers henceforward.

To write well, a writer must write often, and, just as importantly, discover a reason and purpose for writing. As a teacher of writing, it is my calling and mission to make true writers out of every student I teach. Every day throughout the school year I write in a blog for my class, and I share, cajole, encourage, and implore my students to find their unique voices as writers, thinkers, poets, and storytellers by writing in their own blogs in a shared community of their peers. These 61 teenagers wrote over four million words (yes: 4,000,000) over the course of the school year, all of which they freely shared with each other. Now is my time to return to this, my personal blog, to do what I truly love doing; writing for the sake and beauty and power of the written word--and to share this passion with whomever wants to join me, from the youngest writers to the wizened veterans of the writing process, all in separate peer-based, password protected communities. You are welcome and encouraged to join me in a summer writing program to help find and develop your own voices and skills as a writer in whatever way you choose.

Check out my website, TheCraftedWord.org if you are interested.  I hope you are!

The Night

    It is weird sometimes to sit in the quiet of the night. It has been a couple of long days grading papers, teaching and singing.  I was just going to open up the folder with another 15 "Adventure Stories" when suddenly I was impressed with the quiet. The rooms upstairs are full of the sprawled adventurers of my life. Wearied by childhood enthusiasm and the possibilities of another day the younger ones ran upstairs at one minute past nine--and only one came back down with accusations of nerf gun attacks from his big brother. Kaleigh yawned as she shut down her computer and the impossible load of homework; Margaret hid herself in the couch in hopes of remaining unseen, and then it was just me...

I feel a gratefulness every time I can stop and see clearly the perfection of my life.  I should stop more.  I wonder how much I need to keep in motion; I wonder if I stopped juggling the balls if they would just hang in there and say, "Fooled ya!" I wonder and say a small prayer to thank the night. 

The spring is here. The peepers are calling.

Boatwork

I never seem  to find the time to simply update the day, but since the rain has sent me home early from the "boatyard," I'll remind myself of the days successes.

I've spent a good part of my spring break over in Tom Cummings yard fixing up our sailboat.  Last summer we never even got the boat in the water--a combination of finances and busyness kept us off the ocean.  One thing I've learned over the years is to not force the moment, otherwise the moments you have become forced and hectic. This summer is panning out to be a great mix of free time, work at camp, and time enough at the cape. Our boat is a 25 foot sharpie ketch that is about the coolest and best boat I have ever owned.  Though it has a trailer, I still had to keep it on a mooring because the mast is (was) to heavy and bulky to move myself. But life always works itself out...

 On my 50th birthday a group of friends showed up at a bar where I was singing with a wad of cash and a plan to help me build a new mast that is hinged on deck, so I can easily trailer it wherever I want to go. I bought a pile of clean douglas fir, and, with a few six packs of beer, we spent a weekend building the new mast in Tom Cummings workshop. (Tom, of course, did most of the work while the rest of us regaled him with stories and potential destinations for sailing trips.)

These past two weeks (again with Tom's generous help) I've scraped and sanded the boat down to bare wood, rebuilt the massive cockpit, and started the finishing touches which should have the boat ready for the water by mid-spring. Today was spent laying a new coat of fiberglass on the cockpit--messiest work I've ever done, but equally satisfying. It is now a fairly bulletproof boat that should give us years of sailing. All it needs now is a few coats of paint and varnish--work that I love doing in the warm afternoons after school or on the blessed Saturdays without soccer games.

Today was a pivotal day.  The hard work is done, and I am eager for the tomorrows

A Small Lesson

I'm just back from singing a Saint Patrick's show at my mother's nursing home. I was in a bad mood when I got there just because I dropped--and broke the screen--of my macbook pro laptop--a machine that has treated me well for almost three years, but it only took a song or two for life to roll back into perspective as the joy of singing the old traditional ballads scattered my "melancholia" to the winds. A blind woman sat right in front and rocked and swayed and smiles and mouthed the words to Mountains of Mourne, The Fields of Athenry, Danny Boy, and (though it isn't Irish) What a Wonderful World. I watched my own mom, somewhat lost in her daze of alzheimers, looking over at me and nodding as if she agreed with something we both share. Pipo and EJ stood up and helped the crowd clap along to the faster sing-a-longs as if they too were cued to the fact that what we were doing together was the perfect part of the day--more perfect than washing the windows this morning, or going to Tom's shop to fix their own mother's favorite rocking chair--and we laughed on the way home that our half hour show stretched to 90 minutes.

Time, I guess, is never lost when something eternal is gained.

A Benefit Concert for Me

This should be a fun night. I’m playing down at a local watering hole in Maynard MA--legendary as the place where Babe Ruth got drunk on a regular basis. I know it will be packed with all the good folks I come across at soccer games, town meetings, barbecues, and school functions.  My neighbor, Tom Sheppard is going to play bass with us; Johnny O’Mahony will bring down his bodhran and irrepressible Irish wit; Alex Thayer--whom I first met as my daughter’s eye guy--will be playing drums: Wally and Matt will show and do their thing getting the crowd to laugh like hell, and, of course, Hatrack and Seth, the two guys I’ve played with for fifteen years, will set the tone,the pace, and the tempo, which leaves me free to sing, strum my few chords, and have a ball. There’s no big payday tonight and no door to get in; everyone pays with their heart, and we just try and return the same.  After 25 years, I measure my success as a musician with one eye wizened by reality and the other eye still on the horizon; moreover, I’ve learned that every show I play is a chance to put another notch on the yardstick of eternity. Tonight is a chance to give back to this old mill town a little bit of what it gives to me--an utter lack of pretense, a bottomless well of heart, and an infinite stretch of soul.

So, I guess there is a big payday tonight.

Fallow Fields: A Message to My Students

In biblical times, every seven years a farmer would let his or her fields lie "fallow," which means, "to let rest or remain un-tilled." It was their way of giving the soil a break from unrelenting harvests and give the nutrients a chance to replenish in a natural way--not forced by the hand of man. I feel the same way when spring break comes up; I need to let myself lie fallow before the journey of spring begins. It doesn't mean that nothing grows--only that what does grow is meant to grow. During this time, I need to let the weeds of my interests sprout before the dictates of work and money and obligation. I need this time to get back in touch with the core of my dreams and to distill the essence from the fruit of each day. Only from nothing can we see the possibility of everything.

I'll rise earlier and work longer--but, I'll only work at what I love. I'll trek with the boys to the mill pond and tease the horned pout and bass from the cold dark waters. I'll walk with Denise around Tobin Drive while the kids dart around us on squeaking bikes, roller blades, and skateboards and know that I am the luckiest man alive. I'll clamber around our old sailboat and scrape and sand and paint and varnish.  I'll hammer back the loose boards of winter; rake and sweep the yards and gardens; I'll grease the wheels and change the oil, and plant the early peas and radishes. I'll spit in my glove and catch Pipo's fastest pitch or Margarets longest throw. I'll kick back Charlie's rugby ball and collect worms with Tommy; I'll race Emma to the rope swing and back; I'll saw boards with Eddie and try not to worry as he nails them to branches too high on swaying trees; I'll "hang" with Kaleigh and try to remember who and what I was at seventeen and try to let her know and feel and understand that dreams do come true--but only if you grab on to those dreams with both hands and ignore the drumbeats of those who tell you what you need to do and when you need to do it. And time will grow from the soil of the day.

Don't waste this vacation.  None of us needs more rest; we only need to be more alive.

Have fun--and see you in two weeks.

Getting Ready

Out of the melting snow
a football waits
the muddy kick of spring;
the catboat's torn tarp
the only memory
of winter's storm.

Time

The kids are riding their bikes in the street--chains screeching through the winter rust,  they’re playing catch over muddy puddles with wet baseballs and screaming “car” every time there is a new sighting. I feel like I am emerging like a crocus through the snow.  Though I write everyday, it has been mainly for my 62 8th grade students who have been cracking out essays, poems, short stories, and projects for the past six months. Between teaching, coaching, tutoring, singing and keeping tabs on my own seven kids I have let this blog lay dormant for too long. It’s time to find the strength of the crocus and poke my words out of their winter of slumber.  Like any new beginning, it will be a bit of an awkward slog, but there is enough sun in each day now to make that time. It is time.

Karen's Message

This started out as an assignment to my 8th grade English class. It soon evolved into a reflection on my sister-in law, Karen, who passed away this weekend after a long struggle with cancer.

Sometimes I wonder why I teach what I teach.  I know that I love teaching The Odyssey because I sense some eternal power that I can't adequately express in words.  I know that the mix of myth, legend, and tradition has woven itself into my psyche where it rests with the serenity of an aged oak in a field by a slow moving river. I have always been indebted to Joseph Campbell who wrote the book The Power of Myth and turned me on to this hero cycle I am hammering you over the head with everyday. He taught me to reach deeper into the mystery of myth; he convinced me to shed the blinders of cynicism and science and to accept the emotional necessity of the mythological world. But there was always an acorn of doubt that sat in my gut like a seed sown by farmer distrustful of tradition--distrustful of the mistakes and myopia of what has come before me. Until this weekend, when all doubt was removed, as I lived through the death of my brother Tom's wife, Karen, and sat with him and his three young children as they--and we--journeyed through one of life's awesome horrors at the bedside of a mother, wife, and friend taken way too early from the realm of this world.

On Friday, my wife came to see me at school and took me to Concord center for lunch. She knew I was a bit out of sorts after my brother called me on Thursday night to tell me know that Karen wanted to come home from the hospital in Boston where she was admitted last week, and where she finally decided to give up her fight against cancer--the disease too deep in her for another round of radiation and chemo to hold it at bay. She wanted to die at home with her family, without the doctors, nurses, and chemicals that have kept her alive long past the time the doctors had given her to live. Denise and I drove to town and had lunch at The Cheese Shop. She held my hand as we walked through town, trying to keep me tethered in a gathering wind of uncertainty.  Though I was born and raised in Concord--and have always loved the town--I found myself annoyed with everything Concord had become: stores selling overpriced and senseless trinkets, the fancy cars driven by kids and parents tethered to cell phones like emphysema patients with an oxygen tank. Denise smiled at me and told me to go get a haircut, which was not strange advice as Dennis and Jack at the Stop and Blade have been cutting my hair since I was your age, and she knew it always put me in a better frame of mind to hang out with old friends--but it was time for 7th grade football practice and I had promised my team a victory over the evil forces of coach Rouse's ragtag squad.

We pulled into Fenn (taking the new long route) and I was struck by the beauty of the campus: lower schoolers playing soccer and flag football; the upper schoolers laughing as they headed out of the dining hall, teachers going back to class and study halls and meetings, and the maintenance men blowing the cold dry leaves of fall into piles that no kid is allowed to jump in. I was reassured by the rhythm of reality it gave to me.  Denise gave me a kiss goodbye, and as I stepped out of the van her phone rang.  "It's your sister, Annie," she said, "Just take the phone with you, I don't need it." I laughed as she drove away, I told her it might be the last time she saw her cell phone. I've never been able to keep a cell phone more than a month. I drop them in coffee cups; I put them through the wash, or I simply lose them into the black hole that takes things we don't really need.

I flipped open the phone, but no voice answered me. I pressed different buttons thinking I missed some new feature essential to hearing the other side of the call, but, finally, I heard a small voice trying to speak in a pleading that was more air than words: "Can I come get you? Tommy just called. Karen only has a few more hours at most." I muttered and stammered my yeses through her sobs. Where was the few weeks or days we were expecting? What changed to make this happen now? How could this be happening to Karen--the most fun-filled and together person on the planet? Why my little brother who did everything right when I did everything wrong--who had spent his whole life with the girlfriend he met when he was fifteen years old teaching swimming together at summer camp--and they'd been together ever since for thirty years? And why the kids getting the same call at school, pulled out of history, math, or science to come be with their mother to help her die in peace? Annie told me to wait for my sister Eileen, who would pick me up at home in fifteen minutes.

I could see Eileen crying as she pulled in the driveway.  I asked her if she wanted me to drive. She said, "No. I need to be in control of something." I laughed, "That's nothing new." We talked and laughed and cried the twenty minutes to Westford. She wondered if we should be going there--that maybe it should just be Tom and the kids and Karen's parents. I invoked the Yankee practicality of our father and pointed out that Tom would not have called us if he did not want us there. Plus, I pointed out; Tom has always been there for everything for everyone. Eileen laughed and said, "He does always say that it is better to be there when you are not wanted than to not be there when you are wanted." "And, damn, that is so true." I said, as the first explosion of grief wracked my chest. The first of what would be many.

9 Rosebud Lane and the immaculately kept house in the cul de sac looked so quiet and normal as we pulled in the driveway.  I don't know what I was expecting--but I think I expected something more that hinted of the vigil being carried on within. We walked quietly in. Karen was on a bed in the living room, her mom beside her holding her hand. Tommy sat on the couch with his arms draped around Katie, Mary, and Kelly. He smiled and got up, and we all hugged.  "This is what she wanted," he said. Separately Eileen and I went over and said our goodbyes.  I don't remember what I said, just that it was stupid, mundane, and somehow profoundly appropriate. Karen was past being able to respond with any kind of sign, and so I just gave way to a faith that she wanted us there--but not as much as her immediate family. A few of her close friends and neighbors passed through and cried their own goodbyes in their own ways. If Karen's breathing seemed too labored, Tommy would get up and give her some more painkillers and stroke her forehead before kissing her and speaking to her like it was any other day.

We sat and talked and told stories. Sometimes we laughed, and sometimes we cried. We took turns sitting by her.  The local parish priest came by and performed last rites.  He was old and Dorchester Irish and amazing.  We held hands and prayed the familiar prayers drilled into us in our youth. Karen's own faith was always strong and simple and infinitely more real and unswayed by the foolish intellectual doubts of my own journey. I wasn't sure if I gave myself completely to God or if God took me into himself, or if Karen opened a door for me that I have been holding shut. But there was a peace in that room like I have never felt before. Denise and our oldest daughter, Kaleigh, came shortly after. I worried about Kaleigh, but, at the same time, I knew she had to be there--and I knew Denise needed to be there, too. And I know I needed her.

It felt strange to order Chinese takeout, but we did, and it seemed totally natural, and it was a fine meal. Shortly after supper, as we sat on the couches in the living room, I saw Kelly, Karen and Tom's oldest daughter, stand up and go to her mother's side. Karen was suddenly awake. The family gathered around Karen as we left the room. They were all at her side: children, husband, parents and brother--everything anyone needs. Karen was ready to go. They were there to help her let go and to let go themselves. And then she was gone, and Karen--and all of us--were reborn onto a different world, a world equally more rich and meaningful than the world that carried us to that moment. In the background, James Taylor was singing "Secret of Life." It just happened to be playing. It just happened to be Karen's favorite song.

Brother and sisters, Denise and Kaleigh, Kelly's boyfriend Mark, and Beth--who is as much sister as friend--sat in the front parlor. Kaleigh stood at the window, her shoulders heaving. Mark seemed alone and confused. I went up to him and said, "It is really, really good and important that you are here." He nodded quickly, holding back tears, tears that I knew he shouldn't hold back. But we do sometimes, and we learn in our own ways. I held Denise in the way that only wife and husband, and friends and lovers can hold each other. Sometimes we closed our eyes and shook our heads slowly. Other times we whispered practical assurances. "It's better this way." This is what Karen wanted." "Do you think we should go back in?" No one of us knew what to do, but we did anyway.

At a certain point, unmarked by knowing, we made our way back to the living room into the heart of the unimaginable grief, into a new world blessed and forsaken by pure and sustained love. It was a new world and a new way of living blessed by the sacrament of Karen's life and carried forth by the bonds of a hopeful and prayerful family.  In the hugs and tears there was more unsaid than said, and in that way everything was spoken. In the unspeakable sadness there was an incredible beauty in knowing there is life after death, both for the loved one who has left and for those who still love and live on in the inheritance of life--the knowing mystery that sustains us and brings us closer to the eternal God. I watched Kaleigh standing in the kitchen, utterly alone and unsure what to do. I watched as Mary, her fifteen-year-old cousin and best friend, saw her aloneness and slipped away from her father's arms to go over and give Kaleigh the long hug they both needed. Kelly found Mark, and we all found each other in our own ways, in our own times, and, in the slow dance of loveand respect, we sowed the seed of tomorrow.

A couple of tomorrows have come and gone. Nothing is any easier, but everything is just as important. Karen has scores of friends, all of who need a way to share their grief and sorrow.  It is inspiring and amazing how much Tom realizes that Karen is more than just his family's loss, but a loss that is spread over a lifetime of friendships made and never broken by a woman who seemingly did everything for everyone--and always did it right.  I went down to the Strop and Blade thinking maybe I would feel better. Tom has been a regular there for forty years himself. I cried while Jack cut my hair--and Jack cried, too, though he only knew Karen from thirty years of Tom's stories. I did feel better. I walked through the town and loved everything and everyone I saw because I knew there was nothing special that separated me from anything or anyone.

We are born to live and to be grieved over when we die, and the only just measure of a life is the bounty of love we harvest from death. For all of us who knew her, Karen's life is the song we will sing through the ages; for Katie, Mary, and Kelly she left a treasure of memories and guidance that they will draw from in the hardest of times--which I know will be many and lonely; for Karen's parents I can only imagine that it is the relative brevity of time before they join her that brings them solace. Tom knows he was given the gift of a marriage and a friendship as real and enduring as any the world has ever seen, and he has three daughters left to raise alone in a home full of love, but I can only wonder at the darkness he must feel. I am not sure what he truly needs. I can only try to be like my little brother, and be there when I am not wanted, and hope that I am there when I am wanted.

What does this have to do with reading The Odyssey? Maybe I hope that we read The Odyssey because it shows us that there is no way around the tragedies of life, but there is a way through. Every culture has its epic poems and songs that in some way or another chronicle a heroic struggle to find meaning and hope--and a way to approach and live life--that shows us (if we learn to live in metaphor) that life is always an overcoming of adversity. Tom and his family are on their journey home after the hardest battle that life can throw at a person. It is a hero's journey and they are all heroes. There will still be tests; there will still be monsters to slay, but there will always be helpers, too.  And there is tradition to help them.  And there will always be Karen's life and the shared experience of her death to sustain them. The world lost a beautiful person while our lives have won new meaning.

Cursive Writing?

Next week we are having a department meeting on whether or not--and/or how--to teach cursive writing in our classes.  My school is an all boys school for fairly high level students in grades four through eight. Although I now teach without the use of paper of any kind, I'll admit I'm on the fence; but I am finding, after a good deal of thought and discussion, I find I am leaning towards integrating cursive into our curriculum somehow.

My greatest nemesis as a young boy in a Catholic school was the daily drudgery of cursive writing--drudgery that was reflected in a steady stream of C's and D's on my report card, but it was all I learned to do; I never learned block printing except on my own. I did, however, learned to love writing even if it was legible only to myself. The bookshelf over my desk is fell of personal journals that fully expressed my inner and outer life as it unfolded over many years.

All of my poems, songs and ramblings have been transcribed out of the cryptic text of my journals. Oftentimes, I would write and completely rewrite my pieces many times until the final form took place. I have to think that the process of writing and revision was more thoughtful and complete than the approach I use today, which is all accomplished on the laptop I am using now. I still edit and revise, but I don't always go over each word time and again: I search for words, phrases and sentences that need work, but I don't "physically" rewrite the entire piece over and again. Perhaps I should. Perhaps the best of my potential is lost in my eagerness to hit save and publish and sooner reveal my work to the world.

Last weekend I brought my old moleskine journal to my kids soccer game and idled my time writing poetry and sketching ideas for assignments and writing pieces while sitting in my folding chair on the side of the busy playing fields. It was time well-spent.  Within the scrawl of my pages beauty emerged--beauty that never would have come to be had I simply shouted, "Get the ball!" a hundred times over. It was no big deal to return later and "rewrite" the best of what I produced into my online journal. Though the actual cursive writing was still a mess to behold, it was the nature of the cursive experience that enabled something magical to happen for me that would otherwise been lost. And that has to be worth something.

One of the conundrums of education is in making time where it does not practically exist. In my six years as an 8th grade English teacher I have not had a single parent or student request that I teach or require cursive writing as a part of my curriculum. They want good writing skills to be taught and reinforced, and, for whatever reason, cursive writing skills simply don't carry an equally compelling weight of importance. Teaching the mechanics, structure, and content of good writing is our primary goal as teachers of writing, and they are the ones paying the price of tuition to learn those skills.

So where can cursive fit in? After reading millions of words written by my students, I just can't buy into the argument that cursive writing is a "necessary" skill to learn in this day and age, but it is a rewarding and practical art that can enliven and compliment our repertoire of skills as writers. Cursive writing expands the possibilties of opportunity to respond in any moment to the intrinsic power of the written word in a fluid and natural way--and that in itself has to be worth something!

My inclination is to recognize cursive writing as an art, and to teach it as an art that is preferably learned in the studios of the artwing and then practiced in the classroom through assignments that recognize the unique value that cursive can have in our lives. For my part, I am going to have my students write personal letters each month--actual letters sent to real people--that try to capture the best of what cursive writing can offer us as an exercise in expressive and heartfelt writing. Maybe in this way i can kill two birds with one stone: I can pay homage to the personal touch that only cursive writing can offer,  and I can teach a practical writing skill. I would bet that most of my kids don't even know what a postage stamp tastes like:)

I won't (or at least I don't want to) take time out of my class to "teach" cursive, but I will encourage the boys to reengage what for most of my them is a distant memory. If I can't attach an overarching value to cursive writing, I will hardly be able to convince them that it is anything more than a fleeting assignment.  We--and more especially our students--have to experience a reward that will live in them through their lifetimes, and maybe they will someday paraphrase my final thought:

Thank you, Sister Margaret Jean Beatrice.

Some Thoughts on Commas and Conjunctions

The teaching of grammar skills is a slippery slope. I want my students to write grammatically correct sentences, and I want them to experience the confidence that only comes from knowing, but I can’t let them--or myself--fall into the confusing  linguistic morass that undue focus on fully understanding grammar creates. Writing is primarily a skill based on theme, word choice, sentence construction, and the effective creation and ordering of paragraphs--not a rote understanding of grammar.  Study after study backs this up, and my practical experiences as a writer and teacher of writing further validates that good writers carry their essential writing skills with them as they write in the same way that a master cabinetmaker uses the tools in his or workshop. Our focus as teachers needs to be on developing practical ways to teach writing that develops necessary and age appropriate skills and encourages a natural, thoughtful, and confident writing voice.

I am always telling my students that much of effective writing is simply knowing what to do or say in the right place at the right time. With  my classes I try to have as much fun as possible while learning punctuation skills. On of the first skills I teach is knowing when and where to use a comma with a conjunction.  The problem is that most of them still can’t name the seven conjunctions with any semblance of confidence...so I trick them. With a heavy slavic accent--and no clue where I am heading--I ask them to repeat this phrase: “Soyet Andornorforbut.” I then go around the room asking each student to repeat the phrase back to me with the same heavy accent.  Most of them are sure I am teaching some form of of the Russian language. After all of them are proficient with this phrase, I praise them for learning the seven conjunctions: so, yet, and, or, nor, for, but. It leads to a conversation about independent clauses and what exactly constitutes a sentence, and, more specifically, a useful and important way to use a comma.

At a most basic level, a sentence expresses a single thought in any way that a reader or listener understands your intent. “Rats.” is a fine sentence when all you want to express is dismay (or the fact that a group of large mice-like creatures are approaching), but usually a sentence needs to have a visible subject and verb that it can be understood “independently“ as a complete thought. ”I am dismayed.“ ”Rats are approaching.“ An independent clause is a group of words that can survive on its own as a sentence, such as “It is raining.” or “I am happy.“ A compound sentence is just a sentence with two or more independent clauses joined together somehow.  The easiest way to put two independent clauses together is to use a comma with one of the conjunctions: ”It is raining, SO I am happy.“ It is raining, AND I am happy.” “It is raining, YET I am happy.”

The practical point I make with my students is to keep a watchful eye out for these seven conjunctions, and then make a judgement: Is the word being used as a conjunction to join two complete thoughts (an independent clause), or is it being used in some other way way? Invariably, I will see sentences like, “I am, so happy that it is raining.” Or, “I paid, for my own shoes.”  They will look terribly exasperated as they say, “But it’s a conjunction,” and I say, “No. There is no ”junction“ between two independent clauses or two complete thoughts. I will then send them to various websites and online quizzes that can help them master this trick of the trade. Many of these websites are linked to the sidebar of my weblog.  Try some of them out and check your own punctuation skills.

A really cool thing they learn is that you can always substitute a semi-colon in place of a comma and conjunction. And that is one more cool tool in their toolbox!

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I can hear the dryer tumbling in the basement finishing off one last load of soccer socks, shirts, and shorts. I'll dump the load in a bin and drop it on the kitchen floor and let them fight over the pile like maddened refugees. Denise has already left with Charlie for a game in Pepperell; I am taking the boys and Margaret to their games in Bolton. Thankfully, Emma, Tommy, and Kaleigh don't have games today.

The selfish side of me relished the sound of the early morning downpours: "Maybe we will get "the" call and steal one more day from the clutches of obligations, but by seven thirty the all clear sign of silence reigned again. So there will be soccer. We will load up in the van with little warriors, plastic water bottles and a mishmash of soccer balls rescued from the weeds and woods of the backyard. We'll stop at Dunkin Donuts for some donut holes for them and a coffee that will last me until well into the morning. I'll plant my folding chair some distance away from any group of parents who seem to care too much about the game. Maybe Tom will be there and I can ply him with questions about our rough running truck; or maybe Priscilla will have read a cool new book. Maybe it will just be me and a molekine journal...

I'm always aware of how much better Denise is than me as a soccer parent. I've honestly given myself over the reality of the fall, but I never sweem to do it with natural ease I barely look at the sailboat, which by now must feel like a jilted lover; I let the lawn takes its feral course, and I let my kids join in the suburban weekend frenzies. EJ, Pipo, and Gio are all set for their games and are sprawled on the front porch taking a battery out of a remote control car and trying to duct tape the stronger battery to a small flying helicopter--and it is almost working. They don't get my joke when I call them little Orville and little Wilbur.

This is the moment that will be lost. "Into the van...once more into the breach..."

Anaphora: A Poetic Form

A good writer is not always a good poet, but a good poet is always a great writer. Poetry is as much an approach to writing as it is an art--though anything done well enough is an art. Some of you may already be comfortable writing using poetic styles and forms, while some of you might find it too confusing to find any comfort zone. Most of us shy away from what we do not know; we are not inclined to expose our weaknesses in any kind of public forum, lest you be the fodder for the marauding hordes of nitpicking critics. But our class is not a public forum. It is a community of young teenagers trying to give voice to experiences and thoughts that are as valid and relevant to the world at large as any writer who as lived and breathed and wrote on this small spinning ball we call home.

Some of you have asked me why start the year writing poetry? Why don't I have you leap into the more practical world of punctuation, essays, and vocabulary? Why don’t I just have you start by reading some cool short story? I don't--and I won't--because I deeply believe that the writing of poetry is an opportunity that is too often neglected and as such, it is saved for a special "unit" during a quiet spell in the curriculum. In reality, poetry needs to be something we create and work towards all year long. An understanding and appreciation for poetry is the strongest foundation for future excellence as a writer in any genre. Poetry appeals to the discerning writer and to the discerning reader; moreover, poetry cultivates and instills a deep and enduring appreciation for the power of well-crafted words. When the going of life gets tough, it is poetry, whether through music or the printed word, which we turn to for edification, insight, and solace. It is worth the effort!

Contrary to what you might think, I am not trying to turn you into poets, though I am hoping to somehow give you a glimpse of your own potential as a person (and a poet)  with something valid and important to say! I have culled as much from the garden of my students as I have from the tomes of Shakespeare. I am as enlightened by the words of my students as I am by any other author prominently displayed on my meticulous and overwrought bookshelves; I am not asking or expecting you to do anything less than I ask or expect of myself. I am simply asking you to try with your heart and soul and being to be a writer and thinker of words. Whether you become a poet or not is a product of your attitude, not your aptitude.

As we make our way through the year we will be studying and practicing different forms, styles, and structures of poetry. The first form is called anaphora which is the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or lines. Numerous poets (Walt Whitman in particular) and almost all of the biblical prophets use anaphora to great effect in their poems and psalms. Anaphora poems are especially suited to oral poetry and lyrical music (poems which are sung!) This is called parallelism when used in prose or essay writing, such as in Martin Luther King’s speech “I Have a Dream,” or Jefferson's, “Declaration of Independence.”

The use of anaphora is just one trick in a writer’s bag of trade secrets. In that sense, a good poet is a good craftsman who uses the right tools and the right techniques to suit the project at hand. Anaphora poetry is ideally suited for making lists of thoughts and/or experiences, as in repeated phrases that begin with something along the lines of “I remember….”  When you recall experiences, be sure to “flesh out” the experience by including specific images and actions. Don’t simply say, “I remember going to Boston.” because, really, who cares?  You may hook your readers in by giving them a more concrete and specific image and action for them to spin in their imagination. For example, “I remember going to Boston and being stuck for hours on Storrow Drive; I remember the winding convoluted roads pocked with potholes and safety cones--the honking, swearing, and rude gestures...."  Readers only care about how your writing engages and entrances them--then (maybe) they will start to care about you, and they will seek out your writing wherever it can be found. 

When you want to write what you think and feel, use words that let your readers know where you are going with your thoughts: I dreamed, I wondered, I hoped, etc. Let your inner thoughts touch on universal themes captured in bite-sized chunks.

There is no minimum or maximum length for your poem, though it should be noted that anaphora poems are seldom brief. This is because the power of this form of poetry resides in the building up of momentum and rhythm through the repetition of words and phrases.

Turn your poems into me on Monday morning. [ (Please don't attempt the last sentence literally:) ] Be sure to save a digital copy on your home computer as well. We are going to try and find time when we are up at Windsor Mountain to recite our poetry.

Use times new roman font, size twelve for text; size 16 for titles. Be sure to include your name, your section, the assignment name, and the date in the top left corner of your paper. The poem should also have a title ( a good title) that is above the poem.

If you have any problems, please e-mail me at jfitzsimmons@fenn.org, or call me at 978-793-1553

Good luck and have fun.

Daily Journal

First day of meetings. It was good to see everybody, but I am home now pretty spent after a day of preparing for school on Thursday.

Tomorrow is Pipo's first day. He worries whether or not there will be snacks. Denise and I have noticed--more so than in the past--how concerned he is with food. Lately he has talked more of his life in Haiti when food, if it came, was at best uncertain.

EJ is covered head to foot with poison ivy--the end result of building a fort in the woods for the past three days with Walter and his neighborhood friends.

I am realizing that for the next few days my entries will be brief, carved out of time stolen from the responsibilities of work. My student load is high this year. I am teaching the whole 8th grade. I do feel an obligation to the parents who spend close to thirty thousand dollars a year to create a writing and reading experience that is measurable and expansive. Sometimes I think of how reading, writing and arithmetic comprised the core of education, but as we teach it today, reading and writing (in the classic sense) only comprises 15% of the kids actual time in school.

In the past I've been singled out for doling out excessive homework. In my defense, I don't consider thirty to forty minutes of reading to be homework, but rather a practice of life we should all engage in regardless of our vocations. I always tell my students that I will never give them a reading assignment that is not worthwhile; and I won't--no matter what they may think in the moment.

First Yardsale

Artists of hope
the boys sit and count their money
long before it comes.
They’ve spent the morning
untangling piles of old bikes
from summer weeds
grown through rusted spokes
wrapped around stuck gears
and stubborn brake cables.
They spray locked chains
with bursts of WD 40
and remember different wipeouts
on rides around Tobin Drive
or off makeshift jumps
built out of two by fours
and sheets of scavenged plywood
as if every tumble
adds another dollar of value.
They scrawl signs
with crayons and markers:

$2:00 for any bike!!!

I listen, watch, and smile
and wonder if they know
that every bike
and every story
is a purse of gold
carried from the pocket
of a remembered day.

John Adams and Me

    From the deck I can see the breakers slowly working in as the heavy morning fog slowly burns away. In true west coast style I brewed a coffee that is strong and pungent and will guide me through my own morning fog. I was reading until late last night in David McCullough’s book, John Adams. John Adams is an interesting character with whom I feel a marked affinity at most every turn of the book (a book which has way too many turns!). Maybe it is my distance from the New England that creates the affinity.  I am certainly not  a very political person, but I relate to Adam’s need for, and dedication to, his family, his love of walking the countryside, and his practical working of the earth closest to him--earth replete with stone walls, fields, orchards, rivers, wood-splitting, and escapes to the sea--but most importantly, his escape to “quill and paper”  to expose his vanities and commonality, and to find a pathway to express the depths of his speculative thinking. Though he often lived low, he always aimed high, and that is a demon and angel I wrestle with everyday.

    With summer almost over there is as much undone as done. I feel like a waterbug that has skittered across a great expanse of time and water without breaking below the surface to exploit the riches below. There is no new batch of songs; no folio of poetry, and precious few chapters in Hallows Lake, my own--and only--labored attempt at fiction. I can console myself with ten or twelve decent essays and narratives written in support of the writing communities I oversee during the summer months, but not much creative work, which, ironically, is the strongest suit in my deck of writing cards. Writing is still the time that is stolen from the day and not the purpose of the day itself. My own purposes and instinctual priorities, like Adam’s, are the myriad responsibilities of the lifestyle I lead, but he took his life further, wider, and deeper.

    As a public figure, Adams was prodded and coerced by the dictates of a needy public and the enormity of the political upheavals of his time, while I am only inspired by a vague sense of my potential and a mysterious need to put words to the narrow confines of my own experiences and my own sense of the world closest to me. At this juncture in my life I wonder if that is enough? I wonder if I need to put myself on a larger stage and summon the courage to place my life in front of a larger audience and let the chips fall where they may? A week from today I will be back in the classroom in front of sixty fourteen year old boys who I need to inspire to actually give a damn about everything I ask them to do. My monologues need to be reinforced by a model of hope and action. Too often it is true that we teach what we do not do ourselves; too often we only build a scale model of our true greatness out of brittle plastic and weak glue that can only weaken over time, and too often we don’t answer the clarion of our own callings and sit smugly satisfied with the diluted reality of our lives.

    What we think is only real through what we say and do. The waves rolling onto the shore in front of me now are barely perceptible to the boats fishing out of Nehalem Bay. The power of the water is only evident where the water breaks and crashes onto the beach. No one is here in Manzanita content to simply look beyond the horizon.  We are here because the sea meets the land in a continual expectation of beauty and awe-inspiring power. We walk the beaches in search of both the detritus and bounty of the sea. If that sea gave us nothing; if we weren’t convinced there was not more to be had here than from the confines of our own yards, we would just have stayed at home and gathered the glory of our own gardens. I have to set to sea and trawl the infinite broth of what I carry within me, and I have to take myself to where those words curl onto a more public shore. I need to take my garden to the sea and spread my wares upon the waves and let the beachcombers gather what they wish to keep.

    It is not the history of John Adams I am after. It is his unflinching and steady spirit.

Conversations on a Beach

Last night I walked to the beach with the kids to watch the sunset at Manzanita. After whiffleball, tic tac toe, and beach tennis the younger ones came and sat with me leaning against a huge piece of driftwood. We watched the untold fires lighting up and down the long plain of sand to where it rose into massive cliffs swirled in wisps of fog. Kaleigh stood alone a hundred yards away, knee deep in the rhythmic returning of surf, her silhouette slowly melding into the coming night. I wondered what she was thinking.  It was thirty years ago when I was not much older than her that I last walked on this beach and stood where she stood and slept by windy fires and wondered where life would take me or where I would take life. I didn’t imagine that I would be huddled with seven tired and crazily perfect kids after twelve years (to this day) of a crazily perfect marriage talking about the difference between choosing to live simply without a lot of money, which is not being poor, versus not being able to make enough money to take care of yourself or your family no matter how hard you try, which is poverty.

We noticed the lights of the cars winding along route 101 curving slowly along the sides of the cliffs. “Thirty years ago daddy hitchhiked from here all the way down to the Baja in Mexico.” You never see hitchhikers now, and I had to tell them all what it was.“ Pipo asked why I didn’t just drive my car. ”I didn’t have a car. All I had was a backpack, a sleeping bag and three hundred dollars I saved from working at the gas station in West Concord. Plus, I wanted to hitchhike, and I wanted to see how far I could go with three hundred dollars.“

Always curious, Pipo continued his inquiry, ”How far did you go?“

”Not as far as I thought I could.“

”Did you run out of money?“

”Yes, I did.“

”What did you do?“

”I did anything people would pay me to do.“

Margaret asked, ”Did you ever beg?“

Pipo reacted with what is probably a visceral reminder of his childhood in Haiti, ”That’s not polite, Margaret.“

”No, I never had to beg. I just found people who wanted some work done, and I did the work. When I had enough to move on, I started hitchhiking again. If you choose to be poor, then you are not poor.

With his ubiquitous thoughtfulness EJ said, “You can choose to be poor; too bad you can’t choose to be rich,” as he laughed at the possibility.

Charlie wondered, ”What did you eat?“

”My favorite meal was Milky Ways and Coke.”

EJ countered, “You said that you lived on baloney and baked beans.”

“That is another story.“

Charlie wanted to know how many stars were in the Milky Way? I smiled, “There aren’t any stars.  There’s just chocolate and caramel.”

“No. Really!” He laughed and got up and did a cartwheel and a handstand.

Tommy asked, “Did you have to brush your teeth?”

“Oh yes, all the time.” That was all Tommy needed to hear as he curled deeper under my jacket.

Pipo needed more, “Are we ever going to be rich.”

We’re rich now--in kids and bedtimes and hamburgs and night times on the beach.“

”Fitz! You know what I mean.“

”I know.  We’re plenty rich enough.“

The cool wind off the Pacific drove Emma, Margaret, Pipo, and Kaleigh back to cottage where we are staying. EJ, Charlie, and Tommy stayed with me. In the increasing darkness the waves grew larger and more filled with mystery and foreboding. Charlie broke into the elongated silence, “Mason asked me last night if I would go to Toys ‘R US with him. But I said no.”

“But I thought you love Toys ‘R Us?”

“I do, but I knew you wouldn’t let me go. You never let me go.”

EJ laughed with a wisdom that belied his ten years. “You don’t have to go to Toys ‘R Us to get toys.”

“I know. But I do like Toys ‘R Us.”

Tommy perked up from his cocoon on my lap, “I like toys.”

In the true spirit of the constantly churning and changing explosions in his head, Charlie shifted thoughts, “If hot chocolate only costs a dollar fifty,  why did you get mad just because I had two hot chocolates.”

That meal was three days ago, but I’m sure to Charlie it will remain in the present for as long as it remains a conundrum to him. EJ laughed again: “Because two hot chocolates cost three dollars, and nine times three is twenty seven dollars.”

That seemed to satisfy Charlie. “My friends think we’re rich because we have a big backyard, a bus and a boat.” He connected his thoughts quickly, “Are we going to go sailing this summer?  I want to go sailing”

We have an old wooden sailboat that has been sitting in Tom Cummings’ yard all summer--and probably will all winter as well.  It’s a solid and funky old ketch designed by the equally funky designer Phil Bolger whose whole philosophy of sailing is to enable the common person a chance to get out on the water. I wondered if they sensed the wistfulness in my voice. “Next summer we’ll go sailing...” And we will, I’m sure.  This was our summer to scrimp for this trip to Oregon. My head is still racing through the pile of bills that will meet us at the door in a few days. Somehow they will get paid, and we can always dream of somehow getting ahead of them. I turned my eyes back to the sound of the breaking waves fearful that I would lose the blessedness of the moment.

Charlie brought me back. “I’m glad we are not rich. Rich people are not always happy.”

“And poor people are not always sad.” I lifted Tommy off my lap and shook the sand from my clothes, “Wow.  My legs are so long they reach all the way to the ground!”

EJ jumped up, “Mine too. And my shadow is chasing me.”

“Mine too.”

“Me too.”

The three boys ran through the dunes along a trail they only remembered from today, drawn instinctively to the light of the fourth house on the right. I could hear them counting and laughing and running.

I walked slowly onto the same street pulling the fullness of the night behind me.

A Haiku from Oregon

Basho would laugh
while heavy summer rains
splash the hotel pool

-fitz

Writing a Final Summer Narrative

Our house is a beehive of morning activity this morning. My kids, all of whom whom, except for Pipo and Kaleigh, have never been on an airplane before are running up and down the stairs in various outfits that might be fit for their cousin’s wedding in Oregon later this week. Emma is miffed that the plane that flies out of Boston at six o’clock tomorrow morning is not going to fly over Tennessee; Charlie is bummed that we are not going to Chicago.  I’m clueless as to how they hold these places dear to their heart, but there is much we don’t know about our kids.  Maybe the piles of books they bought for twenty-five cents each at the Brewster Public Library rummage sale (and which are now spread like stepping stones across the family room) have sparked their imaginations of travel to various and remote places. This trip is our last hurrah of the summer and our first foray as a family as travelers outside the cocoon of our Bus. It feels a bit odd to be going mainstream with the rhumb lines of our travels predetermined by airlines, taxis, and hotels. I’ve never spent so much money before on something I couldn’t take home and set in my backyard. Like the over-played MasterCard commercial, I am sure the memories will be priceless; but every memory is priceless, as long as it is kept in the scrapbook of our souls--as long as it is deemed a treasure by the passage of time and by the yardstick of our own making.

For the past four years of these summer writing communities my last writing prompt has always been an exhortation of sorts to simply remember your summer by distilling the images and actions, and and rephrasing the introspective reflections, of the water that has passed over the dam of your life. There is a parable in the New Testament that describes a vineyard owner hiring men at different times during the day.  At the end of the day, he payed them all the same daily wage whether they worked one hour or ten hours. This angered those workers that put in a long day's work, as they received the same recompense as those who barely stepped into the vineyard. The vineyard owner pointed out that he had fulfilled his promise to all of them of a certain payment to be made at the end of the day. The religious allegory is, of course, that those who live a moral and upright life will always be rewarded at the end of their lives, and that those who come to spiritual realization later in life will also be rewarded in the same way. One does not trump the other.

I often think of the parable of the vineyard when I read your blogs. Many of you have put in a mighty effort all summer long writing and maintaining a record of your literary journey--a journey that is compelling and amazing. Though you may not fully sense it yourself, I see a remarkable growth in your narrative voice and the confident expression of yourself in your writing. You are the ones who have been working in the vineyard all day, and I hope you already feel rewarded. Others of you are coming to the vineyard later in the day, but you are no less welcome. My own kids fall into the category of those whose busy summers kept them from writing but whose experiences are no less meaningful and memorable. Though I may have to prod my abstemious offspring I know that they will come to the vineyard later in the day and use their voice to find the spiritual rewards of their summer odysseys. If your own journal is sparse, I hope that you, too, will find a way to sit and sift through the grains of your summer and give heft and body, and a lasting testament to the inner and outer rings of these last few months.

There is an intrinsic beauty in preparation--especially if that preparation is a practiced and almost thoughtless motion. The first thing EJ and Pipo did when they got home yesterday (after two months away from home) was to find their fishing poles, untangle the impossible web of lines and hooks, dig some worms, and walk the mile to the mill pond to see whether the murky waters of their dreams would still relinquish its treasure. They didn’t need a lesson on fishing to know what they needed to do; they relinquished themselves to their hearts and let it take them where they needed to go. It was satisfying to see what can only be a subliminal desire on their part to recapture their old selves in their new bodies. You can never enter the same river twice, so I wonder what they were thinking in their silent meditations under the sultry willows that line the shore.  Perhaps EJ and Pipo were only thinking of monster catfish, but I’m sure the gravity and momentum of time will reveal a greater memory and a deeper speculation on what the moment returned to them. Thoughts are only completed by the power of words. They are saved from the diaspora of forgetfulness by the eternal testament and saving power of the written word.

In the same way that we are preparing for our trip to the west coast--packing, paying bills, arranging for pets, sweeping and cleaning and renting cars--a writer needs to prepare to write a lengthy writing piece by preparing for the work that lies ahead of them. Neither Denise nor I are practiced in this discipline of modern travel. As such we are like writers unprepared to face the empty page.  There is an awkwardness in our motions; there is always something we are remembering at the last minute and other things we will only discover when we unpack our bags. This preparation is something we assumed would be simple and easy to do, but for us it is not simple or easy; it is a humbling and awkward lesson in fallibility and inexperience-though not less joyful and exciting.  We realized last night that we hadn’t even planned where to go from the airport. At the last minute, I found myself plotting and planning how to get the most out of our brief sojourn. At the moment of my greatest discombobulation last night I called my brother Tom-- an oft traveling businessman. I laughed at how simple he made the whole process seem. He is already in Oregon with his family, and he mapped out the very few bases we needed to cover. Refreshed and reassured, I went to bed with the serenity that only comes of knowing. Little brother Tom closed the gap of my trepidation and ignorance by power and giving of his free and well-practiced knowledge. In the same way we, as writers, need to listen to those who have been there and done that in the trenches of the writing process.

My hope is that all of you will make a final trip to your blogs and try to capture your summer in a way that is full and revealing and will stand as a monument to your time in the vineyard of your writing community. To keep the strands of your writing together, find a theme--a single word or sentence--that most fully expresses the core of whom you are, what you have lived, and what you have become over the course of your summer wanderings, and let that theme weave through the flow of your narrative. More important than the monster catfish was the reason my boys went to the mill pond, and more important than the details of our trip to Oregon is the dream that is getting us there. These are the things that people want and need to see from a writer. I don’t expect anyone to wait on every word of my travels or my boy’s successes and failures as fisherman(only a vainglorious fool trusts that a reader is only interested in his or herself, for a discerning reader reads for a greater edification) but, for my part, I do trust in the rewards of reading anything written in   the vineyard that all of us entered knowing and anticipating what is expected from us as writers who wish to be read.

Each of us can only do what we set out to do. Good writing is both a task and an adventure. It is never one or the other. If you need help, guidance, or ideas, feel free to share your struggles in your journal or e-mail me, and I (and you, by commenting as well) will help you as best I (and we) can.

Thanks for reading and thanks for writing!

-Fitz

The Size of a Door

As I've been doing all summer long, I drove home for my weekly gig at The Colonial Inn--the same gig I've had for over twenty five years. I came home to the usual: tall grass, too many bills, a ticked off cat, and a fridge that is stoically empty and a sink that is typically full. I put new blades on the mower, but I put them on upside down. It cuts fine, but not much higher than a putting green. The bikes--ten of them, plus a couple of scooters--are rusting in the bike rack with weeds growing three feet high through the spokes. A half finished dog house EJ started sits in the driveway with a weedwacker that refuses to run resting on its pitched roof. If there were more hours in the day, and I had half the motivation of my neighbors, I'd spend the time to make my home a castle fit for a drive by by the local garden club. Once while driving my wrestling team to a meet, the kids were commenting on the various and tawdry mansions that lined our route back to school. I interjected that the size of the door is more important than the size of the house. One kid seemed to get it, while the rest let it drift through their heads like any other of my oft spoken aphorisms.

Tonight our door will open wide. Two car loads of counselors are driving the two hours down from New Hampshire to see the show and "crash" at our house. The beauty of it is that this is not a rare occurrence. On any given night of the week people stop by from every corner and walk of life--announced and unannounced. If my kids see a car pull up out front while we are eating, they will rush to scrunch over on their benches while two or three of them will rush to set as many plates as are needed at the table.  It is just as easy to feed twelve as it is nine. When Denise and I bought our house, the first thing we did was to buy a huge table made up of thick pine slabs. A few years ago we moved it from the cramped kitchen space and put it in the living room where it lives with the fireplace, a piano, and a overstuffed leather chair; all told, it's a great place for a communal feast, be it a feast of Krafts macaroni and cheese or a spread fit for a gourmands delight.

Tonight I am missing a cookout on the beach at Tom and Maureens in Orleans. Tomorrow I will drive back to the cape for dinner with Aunt Mary Beth and Uncle Bud and another whole coterie of cousins and friends.  I'm sure that on Saturday we will be with someone else, or they will be with us. Ten years ago we lost the keys to our front door.  At the time I didn't realize that it would evolve into a metaphor for our life as a family. Buddha said, "They are only rich who realize they have enough."

We always have more than enough.

Daily Journal

I drove to the cape with Kaleigh this morning feeling completely wiped out after a couple days of camp shows and catching up on bills and work.  I got here and realized I hadn’t packed any clothes, so I swam with the kids in my dungarees.  It took the better part of the day to dry out laying on a beach chair. That was about all I was good for. Lolo, MB, and Uncle Bud invited us to their beach club at Ocean Edge in Brewster. It felt weird to sit on the other side of the private beach signs.

The kids had a ball playing in the tidal flats all afternoon with their cousins. I’m always impressed by Uncle Bud’s gentle energy and involvement with all of his nieces and nephews. Every time I looked up he had two or three kids wrapped around his neck crawling and swimming in the warm shallows like a crab. 

Afterwards, we splurged and went out for dinner at a seafood shack in Hyannis.  Clam strips and a chocolate frappe for me:) The kids were happy as we got ice cream after dinner and went to “the best playground in the world.” I noticed it was handicapped accessible. I notice stuff like that much more now. Last night I sang for over four hundred people at a local camp and noticed there was not a single black family there. At the restaurant Denise noticed that Pipo goes out of his way to call us mom and dad in a loud voice.  He must notice too.

The kids are inside now having a checker tournament while I sit out on the stone patio of my sister Mary Ellen’s house. It’s a beautiful old rambling cottage sprawled on a funky acre of land. She bought it with the settlement money she received after being t-boned by a gravel truck running a red light in Portland Oregon. She barely survived. A month in a coma, numerous broken bones and severe brain damage she is still dealing with several years later.

Kaleigh just finished reading “Angela’s Ashes” for her summer AP reading. I’m glad she liked it. I should read it again.  I didn’t like it when I first read it.  Maybe I’m different now. Most books are worth another chance.

All I can really think of now is sleep. I have to drive home again tomorrow to sing at the Inn and then back here on Friday morning. My old diesel truck has almost 300,000 miles on it. It seems to mind the drive less than I do. The summer has been a blessed journey for the kids, so the running back and forth is worth every mile--even at close to $5.00 a gallon for fuel. Maybe someday they will draw on these memories and do the same things for their own kids.

Superman

A lot of people have asked me to make a recording of Denise's song "Superman."It's a great song she wrote while Charlie was in the hospital after what was supposed to be a simple surgery. It can also be found here in my Camp Song songbook. The songbook has chords and lyrics to a number of songs that are sung at one of the summer camps where I often sing--and they are all in the keys of G, C, or D:)

Superman

(This is capoed on the third or fourth fret)

G
There’s a little blonde boy in a superman cape
C                                       G
Racing around the back yard
      (descending bass line works nice  here!)              Em
Sayin’ “Daddy don’t you know I can fly to the moon”
                     C                               D
“I’m gonna bring you back some stars”
            C                              G
“And after that I’m gonna save the world”
              C                      G
“Cause I’m superman today”
                                       Em
Well I scoop that boy right into my arms
        C                   G
And this is what I say…

Chorus
G                            C                G
You don’t need a cape to be a hero
                                                                 D
You got all the special powers that you need
          C                                                          G  Em
Your smile’s enough to save the world from evil
                        C            D                G
And you’ll always be superman to me

That little blonde boy in the cape again
Says he’s gonna jump off the deck.
I say: “Little boy can’t you slow on down?”
“One day you’re going to break your neck”
He says “Don’t you know that I can’t get hurt”
“Cause I’m superman today”
Well I scoop that boy right into my arms
And this is what I say…

You don’t need a cape to be a hero
You got all the special powers that you need
Your smile’s enough to save the world from evil
And you’ll always be superman to me

One day he woke up and didn’t want his cape
And we knew that something wasn’t right
The doctor’s said, “We just don’t know.
We better keep him here for the night.”
I held his hand and stroked his hair
Until somehow he fell off to sleep,
I knelt at the window
and prayed to the stars:
God, help me own leap:

I’ve never been much of a prayin’ man:
I’ve never had a faith very clear,
But give me a sign and I’ll step into line;
Just get my boy out of here—
And I’ll give you everything any man’s ever got:
I’ll give you every bit of my love—
And a prayer came back to me
In a whisper from above…saying:

You don’t need a cape to be his hero
You got all the special powers that you need
Your smile’s enough to save the world from evil
And you’ll always be superman to me

Little boy waking in a hospital room
Looking so quiet and sad
I bring him in his cape and I say “Big Boy”
“How about a smile for your Dad?”
and those wide blue eyes fill up with tears
“Daddy I’m not superman today”
Well, I scooped that boy right into my arms
And this is what I said…

You don’t need a cape to be my hero;
You got all the special powers that you need.
Your smile’s enough to save the world from evil,
And you’ll always be superman to me;
Yeah, you’ll always be superman to me

Words & Music Denise Fitzsimmons